There’s a good article by Ivar Ekman in the NY Times about the meaning of Google’s purchase of Jaiku. Relying heavily on Tim O’Reilly and Chris Messina (two good people to rely heavily on), the article says it’s all about expanding the services Google can provide for one’s presence.

So, here’s the story so far. Computers are invented. They’re all about bits, data and information that reduce experience to what can be managed by digital processors. PC’s are invented. They are about making us big-brained. The Web is invented to make the Internet usable. The Web is about creating a new type of public in which we can connect with one another in ways we’re still inventing. Our presence thus goes from being a reduction to holes in punch cards to being rich, open-ended and fully socially shaped and defined. But, so long as we access the connected net through a computer, it is a place we visit. As it becomes something we carry with us everywhere, it swallows us whole. Our presence in this world becomes constant, intertwingled with the real world, and connected in ways that will emerge from constancy and intertwingling.